


long road back

by pocketfox



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Domesticity, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I willfully ignore season 3b, gingerpeople, violence against cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocketfox/pseuds/pocketfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They bake three batches of gingerbread men and, when they get creative with the cookie cutters, two batches of gingerbread werewolves. They give them red and blue and yellow M&M eyes and name them things like Harry and Alphie and Moon Moon.</p><p>It's funnier than it should be, until suddenly it's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	long road back

She knows it’s coming, of course—every single Starbucks and department store between her house and the school starts playing Nat King Cole the day after Thanksgiving—but somehow Christmas still manages to sneak up on her. It’s not until Lydia is debating whether she should get this or that leather handbag for her mother in the middle of a Macy’s department store, when Allison realizes she really only needs to shop for one parent this year.

She takes deep, steady breaths like she’s got a bow in her hands and an arrow on her fingers, like her mother taught her, like she doesn’t want to cry, and votes for the fawn top-handle bag.

Lydia pays for the bag and tactfully steers Allison towards Anthropologie to look at headbands.

.

“I was thinking about buying an artificial tree this year,” her dad says.

She’s preparing for a (very early) Christmas party at the Martin’s, which promises to be awkward in at least twelve different ways. Ethan and Aiden are invited, and Danny, and Isaac, who will most certainly tower timidly over the rest of the company, pretending he’s a very attractive coat rack. They still haven’t really defined the parameters of their new relationship, and Allison’s not really looking forward to the conversation.

Allison stops in the middle of making the potato salad she’s making, accidentally letting an extra gloop of mayonnaise escape.

“Really?”

The Argent Christmas tree is a monster, freshly sprung from the nightmares of Keebler elves and grandmothers. It’s always fresh, since they moved so much and figured lugging an artificial tree around was overkill, and it was always bedecked in tinsel and delicate ornament, proud and glittering like coniferous drag queen.

“I know we always do spruce, but I though we might save a bit of money. I know it won’t be the same, but we can buy scented candles and bake extra cookies to compensate.”

Allison knows they don’t really need to save money. Allison’s college fund could send her to the private East Coast university of her choice, and it won't really matter that her dad doesn't make that much money as a fake arms dealer for at least another year. They’ve received a lot of inheritances lately, after all.

“Allison?” her dad prompts.

Allison realizes she’s blanking, so she nods. “Yeah, okay. Fake tree. Sounds great.” She smiles to show she means it, and returns her attention to her potato salad.

(The dinner is as awkward as Allison predicted—Allison and Lydia leave for five minutes and return to find Ethan giving Danny a shovel talk as Aiden attempts to provoke Isaac, who is ineffectively attempting to slouch behind Danny. There is, at least, no hallucinogenic punch, although Isaac fakes an allergic reaction to the coconut milk in the eggnog and Danny volunteers to drive him to the hospital.)

.

They bake three batches of gingerbread men and, when they get creative with the cookie cutters, two batches of gingerbread werewolves. They give them red and blue and yellow M&M eyes and name them things like Harry and Alphie and Moon Moon.

It's funnier than it should be, until suddenly it's not. Allison realizes the irony when her dad removes the second batch of gingerwolves from the oven, blackened around the edges and smelling like smoke, and then she's suddenly aware of that the sweetness coating her tongue and throat now tastes like ash and that all the cookies she's eaten pull like rocks at the pit of her stomach.

She pours herself a glass of milk, to wash the away the taste, and wonders if the Hales baked cookies on during the winter holidays before her aunt burned them all alive.

.

Their Christmas cards feature an illustrated snowy cabin this year, as opposed their traditional family portrait.

“It hasn’t snowed in Beacon Hills for twenty-seven years,” Allison points out, as she lugs a cardboard box of gun cleaning solvent to the garage.

“I’m hoping it will confuse them,” her dad jokes grimly. They haven’t heard back from their extended relatives in France since establishing their new regime in Beacon Hills (which, admittedly, they’re not exactly broadcasting), but they’re both a little anxious about the feedback they’ll get. Plus, Cousin Emmanuelle likes to send fruitcakes.

“Maybe don’t put a return address on the envelope, then,” Allison says.

Her dad looks like he’s seriously considering it.

.

Allison tries knitting gifts this year. Scott and Isaac accept their scarves with enthusiasm, Danny with civility. Lydia regards her hat with fond disdain. Stiles mostly looks confused.

.

When Allison was twelve and she told her parents she didn’t believe in Santa anymore. Her mother had accepted it with aplomb and pride, a sign of her daughter’s maturity. Her father had looked stricken.

Allison waited until after her mother had gone to bed, and snuck into the kitchen a put Oreos on a plate and left them in front of the fireplace. In the morning they were gone, replaced by her dad’s good cheer, and leaving cookies out had become something of a tradition.

This year is no exception.

The gingermen survive the night. The gingerwolves, she finds decapitated and dismembered, artistically positioned in a pool of red icing and crumbs.

(The ash returns, but she gets that this is meant as a joke, so she takes a photo and sends it to Isaac and Scott. Isaac responds with _D:_. Scott responds with _:D_.)

.

They spend the afternoon in peace, Allison playing with her new throwing stars and trying on skirts and sweaters, her dad ripping the CDs she’d bought him, Claymation Christmas classics filling the silence in the background. When they attempt to make Christmas dinner, the ham burns and the rolls refuse to rise.

They go to IHOP.

Allison gets Swedish crepes because she has never eaten lingonberries, her dad persuades the waiter to serve him a funny face pancake. They talk about school and work and debate long-range versus short-range weapons (they agree that long-range is better) and which character of Downton Abbey most deserves to find love (her dad votes Edith, but Allison is Carson all the way). 

Yetis don’t attack on the drive home.

It’s nice. 

.

They keep the time between Christmas and New Year to themselves. Her dad tosses mountain ash around the house; Allison rolls her eyes and declines invites on Facebook.

They scatter cedar and cinnamon candles throughout the house. They make another batch of cookies. Cookie Edith finds true love with the gingerkanima and Cookie Carson runs away with one of the surviving gingerwolves. They make wassail and mull apple cider. Allison’s pretty sure the intensity of the smells is enough to keep their home free of werewolves until Easter.

Cousin Emmanuelle’s fruitcakes arrives, smelling strongly of rum and gummy bears, hard a rock.

They send it to Derek, along with an illustration of a snowy cabin.

For now, it's the best they can do.

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS: I wrote this over winter break and then season 3b happened, and as Allison doesn't actually survive her first Christmas as a hunter, this story now exists within an ambiguous timeframe that never happened.
> 
> The title is from Bing Crosby's "I'll Be Home for Christmas."


End file.
